Like photographs of children and puppies, stories that fall neatly into the "local boy made good" (LBMG) or "local girl made good" (LGMG) category are highly attractive to media outlets.

It is powerfully affirming to read about those people from your community, maybe even your neighborhood--better still from your own block--who have gone out into the big, wide world and made something of themselves. Implicit in the tale is that you, too, can launch a successful business, make it all the way to the NBA, or write that best-selling novel.

So reporters and editors frequently gravitate to those feel-good LBMG and LGMG accounts.

A current media outreach that taps into this niche is about collaborative law attorney Sandra Young of Naperville. Along with Brian Garvey, Young has developed "The Weekend Divorce" model as an innovative response to the drawn-out, volatile, messy--and often expensive--ways in which so many people end their marriages.

In March, they will be making an educational presentation about The Weekend Divorce in Yorkville, near Young's roots in Oswego, where she lived the first 18 years of her life. While the distance between her current home and that from her upbringing is hardly transcontinental, it's far enough to qualify for the LGMG treatment.

But once associated with your alma mater, forever linked. That enduring bond is reflected in colleges continually seeking financial support from their alumni. Part of the unwritten, but very real, trade-off is that your university, in turn, devotes editorial space to your life's stories and successes.

So whether it's in business, in the social services, the athletic arena or some other facet of life, universities are attracted to proclaiming, outright or indirectly, that their institution provided fertile ground for helping graduates achieve resounding success.

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Matt Baron has crafted stories professionally since 1984, for the Chicago Tribune, Time magazine and others. His firm, Inside Edge: Public Relations & Media Services, specializes in helping clients communicate their strengths through the media.